Server
The Servers are the computers that host RuneScape. Servers are maintained by Jagex and by contractors retained by Jagex. They are distributed across the real world. There are several types of servers used in RuneScape. *The first server players will meet is the web server, which runs the main RuneScape website. It is unknown how many individual computers manage the site and as to whether the Grand Exchange Database, RuneScape Forums and Hiscores are all on this server. It is probable that the Grand Exchange and Hiscores databases both interface this server. *After selecting the 'Click Here to Play' button on the home page, the game first does a loading process which includes connecting to the Download server. In this process, the game client and all of its updates are downloaded and stored partially on the player's hard drive and partially in memory. *The optimal World server for the player is selected upon loading the game, although players may select another server to connect to if they wish. Each world allows 2000 players to be connected at once. There are currently 141 worlds (three are German-speaking, two are French-speaking, four are Portuguese-speaking, two were Spanish-speaking, and one is Quick Chat only), but more are routinely added. The optimal server selected is measured based on three factors: latency, language, and physical distance. *The player is connected to the Login server when the loading process is completed and a world server is selected. Because all servers are separate, a single Login server is necessary in order to keep player data (player names, emails, passwords, inventory, etc) on every world. *After logging in, the Friends list and Ignore list are loaded after connecting to the Friends server. *Clan Chat is run via its own server *The RuneScape Forums have their own servers, which are accessible even when the game servers are down. *Instance shards are servers dedicated for certain minigames. *RuneScape Classic & Old School RuneScape are hosted on their own servers, which can be accessed even if the main game is down. List of servers This is the list of servers as of 9 October 2014, including Jagex-defined world themes, P2P/F2P status and whether or not lootshare is enabled on that world. It is recommended that players connect to the server closest to them, or that has a ping number of less than 100, as they will experience more reliable connections and less lag. However, this is not mandatory. * The German servers are located in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. * The Brazilian servers are located in United States. On 2nd November 2011 four new Europe Free Servers were added and several worlds were removed or re-numbered. Isolation of worlds Each world server known by the short name world is intended to be isolated from the others. A player is permitted to be logged in to at most one world server at any given time. For the most part, events that occur in one world will not affect any other RuneScape world. For example, character/item respawns and ore regeneration are all managed individually for each server. Additionally, player actions and public chat messages contained in one world will not be visible to players in another world. There are exceptions to this isolation. The Grand Exchange trades with players across all worlds. Shop stock is unique to the player; if a player buys out the apples at an NPC shop, the same shop on other worlds will also be sold out for that player. Clan chats and friends chats are accessible from any world, and private chat messages can be sent to other worlds. The "Strange Power" event which occurred on the 23rd of January 2010 was experienced across worlds. Ping Ping is the time it takes for your computer to send an echo request to the server, and for the server to respond, usually measured in milliseconds. If the server has many players or is farther away, the Ping will be higher. If the server has fewer players or is closer, the Ping will be lower. The higher the Ping, the longer the server takes to respond. As a general rule of thumb, a world with more than 200 is not recommended for dangerous situations, 100 and below is generally lag free, and anything below 50 will have no lag. For example, a world with ping of 35 will probably have no lag compared with a world with ping of 192. To find out the highest/lowest Ping, click the arrows in the Ping column to sort the Ping into ascending/descending order. World switching While players can log out of one world and log in to another at will for any reason, there is a specific practice of World switching commonly known as world hopping. Players change worlds rapidly in order to take advantage of situations that expire and recur on different worlds. These can include the spawning of rare resources such as runite ore, opportunities for player killing, seeking a more populated area to find more players for a minigame, trading, etc. Prior to the move to infinitely stocked shops, player would often change worlds rapidly to buy from one store many different times. However, the shop improvement update gave most stores infinite stock, and later the personalised shop updates returned finite stocks, but made stocks for a particular player independent of world. Players may switch to less populated worlds for fewer players, so they can have more monsters, logs, ores (etc.) for themselves; however, there is a slower respawn time for many objects on less populated worlds - this includes both rocks and trees. To quickly switch without using the "join" option, three worlds may be favourited by clicking on the icon. These worlds then appear as icons next to the play button in every lobby tab but the options. Persistence of character state When a user logs off of a world, all settings particular to that character are saved to the player's account profile in a global database. Therefore, when logging into a different world, the character's skills, inventory, etc. will be restored to the same state, regardless of which server the character last logged onto. The only exception is that if a player goes from a members-only world into a free world, his/her statistics will be restored to the normal level. Themed worlds After the Themed world update on 13 August 2007, a new column on the world select screen was added by Jagex. This column highlights worlds that Jagex has suggested for certain activities, to make it easier to find other players who wish to do the same thing, such as play Trouble Brewing or Castle Wars. The worlds are only recommendations; players may still use any world they want to perform most activities. There are some exceptions to this: LootShare and High Risk Wilderness are only available on the appropriate themed worlds. Oppositely, Jagex only allows players with the appropriate levels to log in to a Skill total world. Players who log into the Quick Chat world are restricted to communicating solely from the quick chat menu. All themed worlds display the flag instead of the country flag in the world select menu. Players who are logged into a Beta world will have a flag displayed next to the world number they are logged into. DarkScape players will have this instead: On 5 December 2012, Jagex moderator Mod Emilee posted a thread to forums, which contained possible world theme changes in future. On 14 December 2012, many worlds had their locations and activities switched (according to feedback from the aforementioned forum thread), and some free-to-play worlds were converted to member's worlds. VIP Worlds where only players who are in the Premier Club are allowed to enter. It is denoted by this flag: ( ) Trade Worlds where players gather in the large cities (such as, Falador, Varrock or Seers Village) to trade a variety of items. Rune running Worlds where players can run runes for money or craft runes to raise their Runecrafting skill. High Risk Wilderness The World (currently 137) where players can kill each other in the Wilderness where the Protect item prayer and curse are disabled. Role-playing The official role-playing world for members is world 42, and the official world for free-to-play is world 41, though other unofficial worlds may be used. Jagex identifies these world for players who wish to act in character (rather than a modern, real life person controlling a game sprite) along with like-minded players, as if they were genuinely living in the semi-medieval world of Gielinor. Special conventions are used to indicate if a person is not speaking "in character". Group questing These worlds are where players gather together and do quests. They are popular for players looking for a partner for either Shield of Arrav or Heroes' Quest. Party room The official party room world for free-to-play is world 136, and the official world for members is world 9. Skill total Only members with a certain total level can log on to these servers. Besides the total level requirement, there are no further limitations. Both of these were originally limited to players with a total level of at least 1000, but the March 2010 update increased the requirement. Skill total (1000) and (1500) worlds are on some occasions called "anti-noob" worlds. With a February 2013 update, worlds 30 and 48 were set up as skill total (2000) and (2400) worlds. Player defined world themes Certain worlds have acquired themes defined by the player-base designated for particular activities. This is usually to socialise with similar players who share interests or to participate in events which require many people, such as minigames or parties. These worlds are: Citadel When a clan member opens a citadel by teleporting to it from the clan camp, Jagex creates it in a separate "instanced" server. The citadel will exist on this world for any clan member who enters, but will close when the last member leaves. It will be created again, on a world assigned by Jagex, whenever it is needed. Technical issues Sometimes a technical issue will occur which may cause every game world to crash and log out players in the middle of the game; it may or may not also affect the ''RuneScape'' Forums. Players may not be able to log back in if the login server is also affected. The problem is usually resolved in a short time. A server rollback may or may not occur which will reset players back to status before the crash occurred. Occasionally only a single world will crash/experience a glitch and depending on the problem, the other worlds may be purposefully taken offline, or not. Information about this will appear in the forums Technical Support section. Other fan sites may also have information if the forums are down. Take special note that servers marked with "OFFLINE" have been purposefully taken down by Jagex, whereas servers with 0 players have crashed. Recent events *In mid-April 2008, Jagex moved all eight servers from Eastern Canada to the United States. *On 23 April 2008, World 36 had a glitch where non-members were allowed to enter the world, but could only access free-to-play actions. *On Friday, 13 June 2008, all of the servers experienced downtime due to problems with one of the game's internet service providers, Telstra. *On 10 August 2008 all of the servers crashed multiple times during the day. The crashes lasted a few minutes but went down again soon after. The servers then completely went offline for the rest of that day. *On 15 October 2008, World 150 was added as the sixth German world with the introduction of PvP worlds. *On Thursday, 23 October 2008, an error with the login servers showed up. At 19.15 GMT all servers were down. The RuneScape Forums went offline as well. *With the release of the 150th quest a server blackout happened. The blackout lasted for about 50 minutes. *On 10 December 2008, World 150 moved from a German world to a French world. *On 2 July 2009, all the Australian and New Zealand servers went down. Players were logged out and when attempting to log back in, they were given the message that "Their account has not logged out from their last session" *On 16 July 2009, multiple servers were offline for a large amount of time. Jagex Mod Gibson stated, "We have pinpointed the world crashes to a problem with one of our servers in America." *On 16 July 2009, 41 worlds went offline. Some of the worlds affected were:1, 2, 4, 5, 7-9, 13-14, 17, 19, 21-22, 26-32, 37, 42, 47-48, 56, 62, 64, 70, 72, 100, 113. Jagex had the issue under control, although a few worlds remained offline for a while. *On 9 November 2009, various "Skill" worlds were released: they required a Skill total exceeding or reaching 1000 for free players and 1500 for members. *On 18 February 2010 some worlds went offline. *On 3 March 2010, accompanying the log in interface update, all flags marking countries turned to the Flag of the United States. *On 3 March 2010, world 114 was changed from being a skill total 1000 world to a skill total 1500 world, causing some upset for those newly excluded. *On 14 April 2010, all of the worlds, including RuneScape Classic, were down. *On 14 July 2010, world 31 went offline. *On 22 July 2010, nobody was able to join a clan chat, browse the forums, and add people to their friend's list or ignore list. Later on, the forums were back online and a few worlds were fixed while the rest of them still had no access to clan chat, the friend's list, and the ignore list. *On or before 26 August 2010, Worlds 170 and 171 are either removed or no longer visible. *On 9 October 2010, few Canadian servers went offline. *On 26 October 2010, many people experienced server disconnection issues. Some servers which may have been affected were: 21, 24, 32, 36, 39, 44, 46, 52, 54, 56, 58 (unconfirmed), 60, 64, 71, 77, 79, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 103, 114, 119, 124, 131, 137, 143, 148, 151, 157, 166 * At the same time, half of the Australian worlds (107, 109, 110, 111) were either removed or became no longer visible. These worlds are still inaccessible as of 28 September. *On 1 February 2011, all of the player-vs-player, bounty hunter and bounty hunter (+1) worlds were changed to normal worlds. *On 9 February 2011, worlds 21, 32, 40 and 85 were changed from free-to-play to members worlds *On 25 February 2011 world 172 was added to RuneScape as a members world. *On 15 May 2011, world 143 went offline for a few hours. *On 9 August 2011, all Runescape servers were forcibly shut down due to memory issues. This may be related to the new Grand Exchange. *On 29 August 2011, worlds 6, 9, 18, 22, 27, 29, 31, 33, 39, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 52, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66, 70, 76, 77, 78, 79, 89, 91, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 114, 115, 116, 129, 130, 131, 132, 141, 143, 145, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 164 went offline. The reason behind this is uncertain. *On 20 June 2012, ALL worlds went offline for estimated 15 minutes. The reason behind this is unknown, because Jagex stated that maintenance would be happening on the 21st (stated here ). *On 1 July 2012, the world servers suffered a blackout. *On 28 November 2012, a scheduled maintenance was due to be performed between 6:00AM and 6:45AM GMT. *On 4 April 2013, several worlds experienced blackouts, including, but not limited to; World 16, 23, 24, 25, 67, and 83. *On 26 May 2015, as a result of an influx of people following Mod JD and Mod Balance on their community live stream, World 16 went offline. Trivia * Some people may change the language of their RuneScape client. This offers numerous advantages, like less or no bots, no competition at hotspots like cooking guild grapes, wine of zamoraks or flax fields, and is particularly useful in the Wilderness * The second world was added on 9 May 2001. * Before the 22 new worlds update, World 156 had not existed. However, players were once able to access this world using easy-to-decipher URLs. It was said that the world was a test server for Jagex to test their updates in-game, but this has not been confirmed. * After the removal of the Unstable Foundations tutorial, all new players used to spawn in Explorer Jack's hut in World 34. With the release of the Troll Warzone tutorial, they no longer do. * Because they are other-language servers, worlds 47, 55, 75, 94, 101, 102, 118, 121, and 122 do not exist on the English server list. (as of 09:11, 13 April 2013 (UTC)) * While some worlds will appear as "FULL" in the Lobby menu, a player can still access these worlds by adding them as a favourite world (by clicking the heart shape beside the world number) and then clicking it in their favourites list. This is particularly useful when trying to get on a server with quick respawn times. It is unconfirmed whether this is a glitch or not. ** This was later fixed when the queue system was added in 2011. Players that attempt to join a full world will now be placed in a queue which you can see your place in in the lower left-hand corner of your screen. You are able to talk in your clan chat or private message from the lobby while in a queue. Once you reach the place of 1 you will be logged into that world. * It is noted that most riots take place in World 66. * Some years ago, you could see where the server was located, which was useful to find out or you would have a good connection with it. This was before the Ping was added to the list (the RuneScape servers previously blocked ping< requests). * Jagex has stated that servers for the Caribbean region will be added in 2011 or 2012. These are set to be world 171 for Members which will be located in the island of Trinidad, and World 170 for Free to play, which will be located in the Dominican Republic. * World 200 to 275 are used for the combat beta update. * There was a bug with all worlds above (and not including) 200, where they would be displayed on the Game Bar friends list as 'Unknown World'. In addition to this, if a player viewed their own Adventurer Log and a player on their friends list is on a world above 200, none of the people in the friends list item would have their online status displayed beside their name. This bug has been fixed * There was a little known bug in the lobby, that you were able to multi-log (twice) on the same account at the same time the bug was corrected in October 2012, the patch note did not mention the bug. * A delay of 30 seconds used to exist between logging out of one and logging into another world. It was removed in a hidden update on 3 February 2014. See also *RuneScape Germany *RuneScape France *RuneScape Brazil *RuneScape Netherlands *Login server *Lag *Head banner *Download server References * Update:Themed Worlds * Update:22 New RuneScape Worlds fi:Server Category:Community Category:Mechanics